Day One of Post Fair work. Two more to go. What a day. Unreal. Beautiful weather, the best all year, sunny and warm. The day held promise that was only realized at the end. The plan was for me to head to the fairgrounds with Pete following in the truck, while pulling our trail. Alas, my red car did not start. This happened the other night at the Fairgrounds. Something is not right with the battery.

I went in with Pete. He was taking the trailer so that we could pull barrels off the trails and put them on it, the end destination the sorting area. We decided to first head to the purple trail rather than go directly to the sorting area because this

The corner of the roof went two feet into the truck

way, we would not have to waste time talking with others about what we were going to do.

This turned out to be a really good idea – we in short order filled the trailer with the green recycle barrels. There was some traffic – the vendors were moving out of their sheds. Done, we returned to the sorting area where there were by now two dozen or so people milling about. We were told that the Mormons were working in the sorting area, and that the special needs kids were removing the bags from the barrels and taking them back to the sorting area.

Pete and I then went out for a second load. This time, there was more traffic. For some odd reason, we had to move picnic tables that were blocking the way into the area with the rides.

We were not able to finish run #3 because someone driving a U-Haul cut a turn too tight – subsequently the roof of a vendor shack sliced through the side of the truck. There was a car parked next to the U-Haul so we could not get past it. It took some time before we could locate Larry, the car owner. He was mumbling something about one of his workers being on the roof when this happened. He eventually moved his vehicle and we returned to the recycling sorting and collection area.

Pete left for school and I continued to work in the sorting area – for a long while there were a lot of Mormons milling about – some were working and some were not. I didn’t want to deal with Elders and Sisters all attempting to get tail, so I went to Raven Hall, the indoor vendor area, and with cart in hand, picked up the blue recycle garbage cans. The director of the recycling center (VCRS) followed. She caught up with me and told me that I needed to supervise those in the sorting and collection area.

Essentially, there were too many workers, not enough work, and obviously, not enough direction. So I gave the idle Mormons some simple tasks. If they had brains in their heads they would have taken the initiative to do this themselves.

They all took off an hour later, leaving two, then one person at the sorting table. Larry, the other supervisor, appeared shortly after the Mormons left, and he and this other volunteer sorted while I did the requisite tasks associated with sorting, like emptying bottles and cans into the super sacks and then taking the full sacks off the frames. I could have helped sort but I had had enough. I just did not want to have to deal with any more baby diapers or plastic bottles full of tobacco and spit.

And oh yeah, went over to the dumpster. Three people sitting on a truck bed, smoking cigarettes and looking at the full dumpster. They had thrown some rotted plywood on top of the dumpster but were not sure what to do with the rest. I asked them if they considered putting the plywood in the second dumpster but they said that they didn’t know how to get it open. “Wait,” I said. I then went down to the side of the dumpster, and cranked the winch handle, which then lifted one side of the chain-link lid up into the air. As I did this, one of the workers peered over the side of the dumpster at me. This was one of those rare moments in life in which I looked smart and those around me looked stupid.

Larry, co-worker, gave me a ride home. It was his kid’s first day of school. Blaah, blaah, blaah. I’m glad the kid was shown his cubby storage area. Such things are really important because if you can’t find your cubby then you have no place to put your lunch box.